Interactive map shows where native and new Berliners live | Hacker News Reader

Interactive map shows where native and new Berliners live

interaktiv.morgenpost.de

59 pointsmoklick25 comments

As someone who moved to a new country, the city center was the only place I really wanted to live because it's the best place from which to get to know a city and make connections. The difference between "I live in the burbs and take the train in to the city center now and then" and "I can walk out my front door and be in a museum, my choice of several pubs, etc. in 5 minutes" is huge. It's also handy for meeting people; you can build networks more easily than when you're geographically separated. Those same networks can be preserved after moving, though.

Now that I've been here for a couple years I'd be fine with a nearby (within 2km of city center) suburb, but that's only because I'm familiar enough with the city that I don't need to explore it daily. If I had started off living in those burbs I would know the city much less than I do now.

I haven't been to Berlin, so I don't know exactly how big it is, but one would not typically call "within 2km of city center" a suburb. One would typically call 2km from a city center, "the next neighborhood over in the city".

Suburbs aren't a "not the cool, trendy area of a city" thing. They are a driving thing. They are completely different towns, not other neighborhoods in the same city. It doesn't count if you can easily walk the distance every day. Think more like 20km.

I mean, really, Millenium Park in Chicago is almost 2km long. The National Mall in Washington DC is about 3km. Central Park in New York City is over 4km long.

>I haven't been to Berlin, so I don't know exactly how big it is, but one would not typically call "within 2km of city center" a suburb. One would typically call 2km from a city center, "the next neighborhood over in the city".

This is an American/Canadian vs Australian (and possibly European) thing.

From speaking to Australians, Downtown is the Central Business District, and everything else is a suburb.

It seems weird to think of anything that is a part of the urban area be called sub-urban.

I'm not sure where one would place the "center" of Berlin, but Berlin-Mitte (which you could translate as "Berlin Central") is really mostly banks and insurance companies, tourists and expensive hotels. It's not very urban, or alive. It's just... there.

I live in Dublin, and am specifically thinking of places like Rathmines, Ranelagh, and Drumcondra as suburbs. These places have a more suburban character, with a distinctly residential feel, but are only 2-4 km from city center. Dublin's not a big city, though. You are correct in your examples from large American cities, but I'm not sure they're broadly applicable outside the US.

The US is, of course, different and drastically distorted thanks to building everything for cars instead of people. Human scale "cities" aren't 60km across. I'm not even sure they deserve to be called cities, but are rather a new sort of urban-ish agglomeration.

Before moving here I lived in Santa Monica. It was about the best I could do for finding a place where I could walk to anything interesting, and even then we're talking about fairly lengthy walks. When you get around by bike, walking, and public transit your sense of scale changes drastically, and you realize that most US "cities" built since 1920 are sprawling fields of asphalt with a building sprinkled here and there. That being said, I'm glad I was in Santa Monica where I was at least able to cycle to a reasonable number of things, and not, say, Northridge, or another place where the parking lots are almost as big as Dublin's downtown.

The main problem of this development is the fact that more and more old local people cannot afford the rents anymore and have to move to the suburbs although they have lived in the centre for almost all of their life. A Kiez is changing very quickly: it starts with an abandoned Kiez which everybody avoids - low rents etc. Then creatives come and a scene is developing. Bars/Clubs etc get attracted, more people move there, rents rise, bars/clubs close again -> scene moves somewhere else. Funny is that a lot of my friends who have moved to Berlin complain that their local club/pub has closed (cannot afford rent anymore) but in fact they're responsible for it. Atm Berlin is still an awesome place with a lot of independent spirit but that might dramatically change within the next 10 years.

The difference in rents is very small, as far as I can tell. Out of curiosity I've looked for cheap apartments even in the eastern suburbs, but they don't really exist.

You'll probably have an easier time getting one, but you won't be paying much less. I pay €450 for a decent two-room place in a beautiful part of Kreuzberg, and it doesn't go much lower than that anywhere in Berlin.

Hm, is it normal in Berlin to live at some place for many years and still renting the apartment? Instead of buying/owning it...

Yes, iirc 90% of people rent here.

Yes, it's one of the places that legislates favourable rules toward the lodger (stringent conditions on rent increases or lease terminations etc). Lots of people even sublet their favourably gotten rental flats onward for more money.

Although if people owned the flats, the lower income senior citizens would still move: they would find it expedient to sell their now-expensive flats and put the money to living expenses (or grandchildren or travel or assisted living etc). This is happening in other growing cities around the world.

edit: It seems to me renting (or some other form of "right-of-occupancy" arrangement) is actually the desireable choice for most situations. Investing hundreds of thousands in a single unit of housing is not a good fit for most people's savings/investment plan - you'd want to diversify, and possibly hedge against things going downhill in your neighbourhood. If rent market works well, and taxation and rental terms work out, it's better for everybody to just pay for the apartment's financing and maintenance plus a small profit margin in the form of rent.

Sure, it is. People often move every 3-15 years, while staying in the same city (or sometime leaving for another city). This is much easier with renting where you just have to take care of finding the new flat, rather than also selling your old flat.

People usually buy a house or flat only when they are very good situated and are founding a family. And even then most prefer renting simply because you have to take care of less things (owning a house can be quite time consuming).

That I believe is called Gentrification: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gentrification

Interesting. I wonder whether you wouldn't find the same pattern in many other metropoles. On Manhattan, when I lived there, everybody seemed to be from somewhere else.

Maybe this is just a function of the facts that a city center is an expensive place to raise kids and that few aim at living in another city's suburbs; if you are moving to some suburb of another city you might as well just stay in the suburb of the city you are currently in.

I think you can compare the centre of Berlin (roughly Mitte, Charlottenburg, Tiergarten, Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, Prenzlauer Berg) to Manhattan in that respect.

Those are the areas where the interesting stuff is happening that makes moving to the city worthwhile. As for Berlin most of the startup activity and economic growth is happening in that area. In addition to that all the important government institutions are located in that area, too.

Rapid transit is an important factor as well. Inside the S-Bahn-Ring you can get around really fast whereas getting from say Köpenick to the inner city takes quite some time.

I suppose the areas around Manhattan or Greater New York as a whole would show a very similar picture.

I wonder whether you wouldn't find the same pattern in many other metropoles.

Yeah I'd be interested in seeing similar stats for other cities.